


Escape

by Axis2ClusterB



Series: Anywhere But Here [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-04
Updated: 2012-11-04
Packaged: 2017-11-17 17:24:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/554072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Axis2ClusterB/pseuds/Axis2ClusterB
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sirius always thought he'd do anything to get out of Azkaban, and finally realizes that that is true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Escape

He’s used to cages. They’ve been his life for so long now, bars on windows and bars on doors, all locked up with the most hideous wardens imaginable.

That’s not the worst.

Sirius sighs, drilling the heels of his hands against his eye sockets as his mind begins to wander. He tries not to let it happen, but it’s been so long since he’s let himself think of Remus and the images are beginning to flicker through his mind. Remus and James and Lily and Harry. It’s too late. He can hear the rustle of the Dementors’ long cloaks, the soft, sibilant whisper that marks the sound of their excitement as they converge around the iron bars of his cell door.

“Remus,” he whispers hoarsely, because for a moment he’s more concerned with the fact that the face is beginning to dim, the memories becoming transparent and one-dimensional. It’s becoming harder and harder to remember the feel of Remus’s skin under his hands, the warmth, harder to remember the low sound of Remus’s laugh after the lights were out. Sirius shudders, backing away from the nightmares crowded at his cell door, retreating across the filthy stone floor of his cell to the farthest, darkest corner, and there he shifts.

Padfoot crouches low, shivering all over, anxious whine building low in his throat as he scents the Dementors, death pain fear rot. It ends like it always does, with the Dementors dispersing in confusion. Padfoot curls up on the thin, stained mattress and falls into a fitful doze.

*

“And what of Black?”

Voices.

“I don’t really understand it, Minister. He’s still very much… ah… in possession of himself.”

Voices that grate on Padfoot’s ears, wake him from half-sleep with a very human burst of panic.

“He’ll break, sooner or later.”

Or maybe, Sirius thinks a moment later, it’s more that his thoughts are becoming more like Padfoot’s the longer he’s caged.

“Black! Sirius Black!”

Sirius unfolds himself from the cot and ambles over to the bars, some old instinct keeping his head high and his pace leisurely. “Good of you to visit, Cornelius,” he rasps out, taking savage pleasure in the look on Fudge’s face, the prissy little way that his mouth draws up. “I’d ask you in, but I seem to have misplaced my keys.”

“How *are* you doing it, Black?” Fudge asks, something much like wonder on his face.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Sirius says, and that’s when it catches his eyes. The Daily Prophet sticking out of Fudge’s robe… the edge of the picture on the front page… but there’s no way.

“Why the devil are you looking at me like that?” Fudge asks, taking a half-step back and Sirius forces himself to calm, pushes the hungry expression back down.

“If you’ve finished with your paper, do you think I could have it?” he hears himself ask, around the roaring in his ears. “I miss doing the crossword.”

If the look on his face is anything to judge by, it’s shock more than anything that carries Fudge close enough to shove the paper through the bars to be grabbed by Sirius’s filthy hands. “Don’t get yourself accustomed to it,” Fudge says, but Sirius has already dismissed him, retreated back to his cot to spread the paper out there.

Molly and Arthur and a lot of redheaded kids.

There, though. On the shoulder of one of the boys. It’s him, there’s no one else it could be.

Alive.

Alive, and at Hogwarts.

Sirius throws back his head and laughs, laughs like he did when he was arrested. It *is* funny, funny in a horrible way that’s probably very close to insanity, and he can’t stop the laughter until, from down the corridor, a woman starts to scream. Sirius has a moment to hope vaguely that it’s Bellatrix before he begins to read.

*

He’s at Hogwarts.

The thought seems to be wearing exhausted grooves in Sirius’s mind, mingling with Padfoot’s own thoughts of bones splintering and crunching and the copper of blood being spilled.

He’s at Hogwarts.

He’s at Hogwarts.

*

The only thing for it is to escape.

Sirius wants to pace as he plots, but he makes himself huddle on the filthy cot instead. The Dementors are suspicious enough as it is, always hovering outside his cell now, sucking up the new spikes of emotion that come with the thoughts of Wormtail at Hogwarts with access to Harry.

Out, out, out.

Sirius tangles his hands in his long, matted hair, tugging hard at it. The thought is Padfoot’s, and the overlap is beginning to scare him.

Padfoot.

Out, out, out.

Maybe it’s time to give Paddy a crack at it.

The shift is easy, as it always has been, and Padfoot knows exactly what to do. He curls up on the bare mattress and waits.

*

Padfoot takes his chance as soon as the cell door clangs open and a robed figure glides in, bearing a tray. He doesn’t hesitate, won’t let himself, just slinks to the floor and around the Dementor and out the door.

The dank stone and steel corridors of Azkaban are nightmarish after dark. Padfoot slips from shadow to shadow, taking full advantage of the near-total darkness, letting it shield him from the prisoners. His nose guides him, lets him follow the almost imperceptible current of fresh air, sifting through fear smells and desperation smells that keep a low whine in his throat.

Out out out.

Fresh air scent is stronger now – air and water and clean moonlit night – and Padfoot slides down a final steep flight of stairs, overbalances, and tumbles against a gate made of thick iron bars.

It’s there, just there, rocks and sand and out out out.

Once he works his head through, it’s nothing to squeeze the scrawny shoulders and thin slats of his ribs through.

Out out out!

He wants to run and jump and bark, but it’s still too close. Padfoot dashes for the water and wades in, thick fur protecting him from the frigid water as he strikes out for the world.

As soon as Padfoot gains solid footing on the opposite bank, Sirius sprawls himself across the rough rock beach. His eyes eagerly search out his first sight of the full moon in twelve years, and he thinks as he begins to laugh that it never looked so good before.

-End


End file.
